The grimoire is finally available on Kindle at the Amazon store. It took a lot longer to get to Amazon because the file previewed very differently on the Kindle devices than it did in the Kindle app. Amazon’s only suggestion was to recreate the whole thing as a Word file, which wasn’t something I was prepared to do.

A few formatting problems slipped through the cracks even in the iBook version, so it isn’t perfect. But the text is still readable and the 5.99 you spend will save you a lot on mojo costs down the road. You will also be able to find the best information in the posts as of July 1 without having to search through the archives. The information is as current as possible as well.

Please buy the book and buy copies for your friends. It will help keep the blog afloat. Most important, please give review the book on iBooks and Amazon. Even if you don’t love it, the reviews help.

But what’s not to love?

Residential tips

There are so many residences now that you should take the time to consider which actually deliver the most value to your kingdom. You should consider three factors:

Cost

Overall return

Space consumed

Overall return makes more sense than picking coins over experience since both will add up quickly. You also want to consider cost to return, especially hourly return. If you don’t intend to check in more than a couple of times a day, residences may not be your best buy since they mature hourly.

You should also look for items that take less space. The Chinese residences take less space than the Japanese, for instance. When you can only pack 50 to a realm, however, this may be less important than with residences such as the Bird and Creepy residence, which seem to have unlimited placement. When you have to choose between the bird residences that can be packed tightly together, and the more expensive orcs that take far more space, the bird residences become the far wiser investment.

Fortunately, ngmoco:) scales the number of residences available with your level. This allows you to increase your investments with your ability to spend.

As you can see, the orc residences, which cost 10000c more than the birds, cannot be packed together as tightly. Since the overall return is the same (350hcp) you will produce a higher yield per realm by packing it with bird residences.

I’m not making the announcement official yet because I’m still working out the many wrinkles involved in getting the Grimoire ready to sell for Kindle. But if you want the iBooks version, it’s ready under consumer guides for 5.99. Search for We Rule.

Never mind. It’s not coming back.

If you don’t follow ngmoco:) on Facebook you may know they cancelled the most recent disastrous event but you might not know they actually surrendered and gave everyone the frog castle and wishing well. They also gave everyone 35 mojo, which probably won’t make up for the mojo people spent trying to actually capture the frogs.

You can find the items with your other discontinued items at the very bottom (or top) of the build menu. The frog castle returns 3500cp over 18 hours (194 hcp) and the wishing well 10700 over 22 (487hcp).

You won’t find the event rewards in the featured items menu. You will find them as the most recently added items with the discontinued buildings in the standard build menu. You will have to scroll all the way to the end of the menu to find them.

At this point I have collected at least four of every frog. (I stopped counting at four for each one). I haven’t been awarded a single building. Originally the quest chart indicated I would need to collect three of each. The the quest chart went away. This event does not keep track of any frogs collected.

Hopefully, ngmoco:) will take the event down and fix it, or fix it and then extend the event.

This was the original event chart, before I collected anything. As you can see, it says I collected all three of everything. Since then, they took it down, I’ve collected four of everything and still no rewards.

Don’t waste mojo until you know the event works and you’ll get credit for your frogs.

I’ve captured every frog and still not unlocked my reward. The progress indicator said I found three of every frog, now it’s not showing at all. You might want to wait until the programmers finally fix the bugs. Originally we had until last week to finish but we have until the 17th.

After months of frustration We Rule: The Hidden Grimoire the book is one step away from publication. I would like to tell you it’s ready, but I’m gun shy after months of frustration with Book Baby.

I did finally receive my iBooks account, the account that allows me to sell books, today. So unless another major setback occurs (like when iBooks accidentally sent me to the free books set up without explaining the difference, forcing me to set up a second account with a different id and email), I should be able to announce the book sometime this week.

Once I have the book available in iBooks, I’ll start preparing it for sale in Kindle format for Android gamers.

The good news for gamers is that with all of the setbacks, I was able to make some last minute rush changes to make the book as up to date as possible. The published version will include the new challenge to groves for upper end players, residences.

Carol and I are also rushing to finish the final proofread of Raising Hell, which you can sample in the pages section of the blog.

Speaking of residences

In case you were worried that ngmoco:) is getting ready to abandon the game, some of the new additions give hope for the future. Developers most recent releases have had major bonuses for players at higher levels, which means they are looking for strategies to keep players interested.

Remember the old days when players would stack row after row of rubies in their realms? In the days before ngmoco:) decided to shut the practice down, albeit unsuccessfully? They didn’t stop the stacking but they limited the number of groves you could buy with coins.

Players with lots of coins who have reached L61 might be interested in the new bird residences which, at least until ngmoco:) reads this blog, has no ceiling for installations in one realm. They deliver 350hcp and cost 50000c. This can get expensive, but you can actually pack 1365 into a single realm (leaving room for a very necessary harvest orb) without stacking.

They released the residences after the chess king (L80) which delivers a whopping 450hcp idle. I spent 140 million coins installing 70 which deliver 943000cp every 30 hours. A realm filled with bird residences costs 68 million coins by contrast and delivers 478000cp every hour on the hour.

I was able to fit 1365 bird residences and a harvest orb into one realm without stacking. ngmoco:) developed them to overlap on two sides so that you can add 37 to a row.

In other words, for half the investment, you get the same return if you only collect twice in thirty hours. If you collect six times a day, you get three times the return. Realistically, you can only collect twice every three days from the chess king. If you only collect three times every day for three days, you earn three times as much as the chess king delivery.

This is one of those cases where hourly return doesn’t always result in the best payoff. In addition, if you start to fill two realms with bird residences starting from the time they become available at L62, you can buy all the chess kings you want when you reach L80.

You don’t have to do this at one. Two rows of bird residences cost 4 million c. By L61 you should be able to add a couple of rows a week. And by the way, in case you were wondering, if you did stack you could fit just under 5500 residences at a cost of 240 million c and a finger tip worn to the bone.